By 1220 AD when Marco Polo and his father and his uncle began their treck eastward, they had to carve a route from Europe to the China of Chinese antiques. There had long been a Silk Road to the east from Damascus. In fact as Damascus was the western terminus of this thousands of miles long trading route, the finely woven silk Damask was created in Damascus, the oldest continually inhabited human settlement on earth. The great arc of civilization lifted around Jericho, down through Mesopotamia and Sumer, and in the fertile Nile delta of Egypt.

This area became the cradle of civilization, as it was the first wave of humanity out of Africa. The peoples living in this area had the most time to evolve their ways of mastering their local environment and how they adapted themselves and the local crops and the domstication of animals moved humanity forward from tribal to urban, at least in the first city state effect of ten thousand year old Jericho before all, then the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia at Sumer and then Babylon, and fertile Nile delta Egypt. We now know this area as Syria, Isreal, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq,Turkey and Iran known as the Levant and area.

We know that civilization in Europe came directly from India. History shows the westward drift of civilization from India came to us through the Persian Empire, who had roots in nearby India; who fought against, yet were absorbed into western thought and mathematics. Carved statues in ancient Persia shows kings walking hand in hand in harmony, and this was centuries before Roman power with emperors who made themselves Gods, as Alexander had done. Alexander had defiled decent concepts of free will.

Free will, in good or evil are Indian, not Chinese in their influence. Chinese talents praise the emperor and allow that the highest duty is to serve the emperor, or the state. The Sanskrit words of India are the basis of modern wetern expression, math came to us from the Arabs. Yet it was mysterious Cathay and its more mythic Silk Road that drew medieval Venetian travelers drawn to the possible route to the mysterious east. Travel between the west and the east has often held unpleasant suprises, an Marco Polo came prepared for this, as his father and uncle had before him.

With Marco Polo it was a natural route to follow as his uncle and father had completed with success. That is, their trading vessel would take them down past the Dalmatian Coast and around Greece, up the Dardanelles and through the Bosporus at Constantinople into the Black Sea. Here they would transverse up to the north east edge of the Black Sea, and begin to meet and interview temporary guides to the east. This was best arranged with tokens of tribute, but no show of wealth ever.

Any foolish enough to display wealth could easily die on the trail, or in dark alleys. In those days of 1220's Silk Road to China entailed many obstructions of a physical or human nature. Each had to be handled in its way. Aragged mountain pass on the descent down from the great high plateaus of Tibet down to the burning sands and brackish water of the Gobi Desert. By then looking quite ragged theselves by then, Marco Polo would fight off fear and a sense of desperation and continue to encourage the pack animals to move further along.

Even if you or I were not on that 1220's series of walks along the Silk Road, you can display the sense of urgency about realizing your moment, and what to do next. With Marco, it was to keep well hidden his cache of diamonds to trade for rolls of silks and packets of spices. How you buy now while their nas not been a notable rise in price allows you time to gather your Mings in May, so to speak. For when the autumn winds of a decade from now will be here all so soon. And Who will the new rich Chinese buyer want to see.

When the buyer of your Chinese antiques has searched and asked Google who owns her great grand mothers Mings and things. And she finds that the owner is - you. How you handle her will require serene inner wisdom; kowtows by you should be graceful and supreme. Make her pay, Marco. You have shown infinite wisdom, smile with inner acceptance, you hold your retirement porfolio of success, enjoy.